“I’m sorry, but even my magic cannot find him,” the Ancient One breathed out a sigh that raised fog from her cup of tea. She returned it to the table, untasted as she shook her head. “En Sabah Nur has been a thorn in my side for far longer than I care to admit, but the power of the Celestials is something even I cannot overcome.”
“The Celestials,” Dan snorted, face pinched into a frown. The will of these powerful beings meant little to him, but their technology was beyond comprehension. “Are you certain you can’t do anything?”
He knew that there was magic that could pierce Celestial armours. Forged by the power of Asgard, they were not something he had access to. If the Ancient One truly had no solutions, he would have to step up another plan of his.
“Odin and some of the other gods have the power to harm Celestials, the weakest ones anyway,” the Ancient One waved a hand and summoned a book from her personal collection. “This can show you some of their techniques, but no one has found a way to see past their reality cloak… not without the power of a realm god.”
“So Odin could find him?” Dan raised an eyebrow at her words. The King of Asgard was bound to the power of his kingdom, as well as the might of his world tree. “That old goat has a realm.”
The Ancient One shook her head and projected a vision of Cyttorak and Mephisto, alongside a few others that Dan had never met. She cycled through a menagerie of multidimensional entities, each one far beyond Dan in power.
“Odin’s realm is too small, a fragment of the true infinity needed to match most Celestials,” the Ancient One dispelled the illusions and returned her hands to her tea. “You may need to make a bargain with a higher power, if you want to find your friend.”
“Not a chance,” Dan downed the last of his own tea in a single gulp, before he rose to his feet. He would never sign a contract that limited his choices in the future, no matter how much he wanted to save Bucky. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to lend me that time stone of yours?”
“Not a chance,” the Ancient One threw his words back at him with a laugh. “But you already have two stones, surely they are enough to see you through this trial?”
“The space stone has to remain where it is, you know why as well as I do,” Dan shrugged as he moved to the open window of her study. “The power stone is enough to force him into the light, but only if I know where to aim it.”
Dan looked to the heavens, already decided on his next course of action. He’d intended to wait until he could freely use the space stone, but his own spatial abilities would have to be enough.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I’ll be gone for a while, hopefully not long but I can’t be certain,” Dan turned back to meet the Ancient One’s gaze. “Do me a favour, keep watch over my friends until I return.”
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“See, she won’t wake up,” Goku let his biofield extend to shield Anissa and Merlyn from the fires of Krypton’s sun, frustration on his face as he tapped his knuckles against the barrier around May. “No matter what I do, I can’t get past this energy bubble and she won’t answer… what’s the matter with her?”
Merlyn placed a hand against the transparent shield, eyes closed as a circle of runes highlighted the barrier’s edge. Lips turned in a frown, he shook his head and stepped back from the blockade of force.
“She is undergoing apotheosis, a true conversion and adaptation of the divine fragment she absorbed,” the Wizard’s hands moved in a blur as he cast a spell, layers of runic script that surround May’s unconscious form. “We cannot stop it, or she will suffer a deadly backlash.”
Merlyn’s magic snapped into place, a formation that directed the energy of the sun and focused it onto May’s body. The star of Krypton dimmed, its light stolen and channelled into a single point.
“All we can do is help her survive the transition,” Merlyn took a seat beside his formation and continued to empower its structure. “I will remain here and guard her, you and your friend shall go and inform the others. With May and Dan both absent, we must be more vigilant than ever…”
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“Hurry up, Cal, we don’t have all day,” Kara rocked on her heels, impatient as she waited for her friend to finish his work. “I’m behind on my patrol and Dan-EL has commanded that we operate in pairs from now on.”
“Be patient…” Cal narrowed his eyes and adjusted the spell that floated above his hands. “The fusion of two different magical disciplines isn’t something to be rushed.”
“Fine, I’ll see if Logan can go with me,” Kara shook her head and moved for the door. Cal had been attempting to fuse Merlyn’s magical system with the Ancient One’s for the last twenty years, if she waited for him to finish the Earth would be consumed by the ravages of time. “He needs to get out more, or he’ll officially become a hermit…”
“People of the Earth, mutant brothers and sisters, hear my voice and rejoice!” A psionic wave expanded over the Academy, a force that extended beyond the horizon. “The time of mindless freedom is at an end, a new era has begun!”
Cal dispelled his magic and moved out of his chamber, on Kara’s heels as she leapt from the window and into the sky. The psychic field that surrounded them was powerful enough to encompass the Earth, a tainted and shadowed mind that she recognised as the escaped Farouk.
“I am the God-Emperor En Sabah Nur, lord and master of this planet and its people,” projected by his apostle’s enhanced power, Apocalypse’s words pushed at Kara’s mental barriers like a series of hammer blows. “The false god, Superman, has abandoned you. This world shall now be purged, cleansed of the weak so the strong may prosper…”
“He’s infiltrating the minds of the population,” Cal’s hands balled into fists as his eyes glowed with runic light. “Targeting the human military, look…”
Oversized missiles raced toward the heavens, driven by the roar of rocket fuel. They struggled upwards until they escaped the atmosphere and blossomed into atomic stars. Although Dan-EL had prevented their use against the general population, the countries of the world had never stopped stockpiling nuclear weapons.
Now their efforts were erased, destroyed by the power of a single telepathic mutant. Kara frowned as she scanned the Earth, no sign of the enemy's location, no matter how hard she strained her eyes.
“To the mutants of the world, step forward and join me, or be culled with the rest of the herd,” Apocalypse’s words echoed from the shadows, pressed against the minds of the masses like a razor’s edge. “The time of Apocalypse has begun, only the strongest have the right to survive…”